How Retaining Your Workforce Translates Into Business Gain

A great workforce can be the deciding factor in the success of any business, especially in the support services sector.

And because of that, one of the most important challenges for managers like you is recruiting the best people for your organisation. But that’s only the start. To remain competitive, retaining your workforce is vital.

Every organisation has its own rate of employee turnover and it tends to vary drastically depending on the industry. Cleanlink estimates that the cleaning industry faces an extremely high turnover rate averaging at 75% and reaching as high as 400%.

When an employee — a vital resource on your busy team — leaves, it costs your organisation in time, resources and money to cover that absence; then further time, costs and resources to source, employ and on-board a replacement. For front line, managerial teams and the executive, changing jobs and career paths is part of life and employee turnover is something that every business with employees experiences. Investing in improving employee retention is a positive move, both for the organisation and in terms of the employee experience.

Ensuring that your employees are looked-after, managed effectively and are properly integrated within the company’s culture, vision and mission, will all work towards keeping your staff turn-over as low as possible. Taking a single employee as an example, retaining rather than losing them, will provide benefits in the form of:

Lower Costs

As a position becomes vacant, the risk to consistent service delivery rises. So, the pressure is on to find and replace the lost employee. As we mentioned above, recruiting, selecting and training new workers costs time, money and effort so taking measures to retain employees can lead to substantial savings.

Improved Efficiency

Each time a person leaves your organisation, it has a ripple effect across other areas of the business. A missing team member can equate to slower production, decreased service delivery and a fall in moral with remaining colleagues. Improving employee retention can by-pass these problems.

Sustain Competitive Edge

More often than not, your staff are the face of your organisation and it is their expertise in the service that they deliver that builds business reputation. The expertise of your employees have in regards to your organisation is gained over time and enables you to compete favorably and gain competitive advantage in your industry sector. Ensuring that you keep hold of your employees, is key to ensuring that the reputation of your business remains positive.

The investment into and implementation of technology can help you proactively address the needs of your workforce and keep them happy in their jobs. Software solutions specifically designed to manage large and/or dispersed workforces are key to retaining staff by simultaneously taking care of the interests of each employee while enabling your business to increase its efficiency, reduce costs and remain compliant. Two software solutions are:

Workforce Management Software

The days of planning, preparing and operating a contract with pen and paper or spreadsheets are long gone. If you’re still using these methods, you’re also probably failing to grow market share and/or improve margin. You’re probably losing staff, too.

However, you probably want your business to retain staff (and contracts), so you need to be making the switch-up now. Workforce management software is capable of a wide range of tasks to keep your service delivery on track and to standard, and also provides your employees with the information and flexibility they need to plan and work around other commitments that they may have. Investing in workforce management software will not only streamline processes making your business more effective, but it will also encourage your workforce to remain loyal to you.

Recruitment Software

Being able to find and then recruit the people best suited (and legally applicable) for a job, is a top priority. Investing in software solutions to aid the recruitment process will generate a strong team of people that have been correctly managed throughout the on-boarding process. Integrating them with company culture right from the very start of employment will make new hires feel like a valuable part of your business. And by looking after the interests of your workforce, your workforce will ultimately look after your business in return.

Considering all the drawbacks that workforce turn-over presents to a business, you might be surprised to learn that some types or amount of turnover can be quite positive. For example, take the movement of people within the business from one function to another. This internal turnover is good in that you are retaining your trained staff and keeping them satisfied, by best using their skills in another area.

Ultimately, no one really wants to lose an employee that has training, time and money invested into them. However, people will move on no matter what you do. In cases like this, the key is to use the situation as an opportunity to review and improve management and recruitment processes and policies to aid the ongoing development of a business.